More signs of new life

I usually publish a post on Monday's giving a summary of the work done the previous week and a description of what we have harvested. This week I have been delayed again. My excuse is that at the moment I'm taking advantage of a rare peaceful period when instead of a ball of fluffy energy charging around the house finding mischief where there should be none to be found as the the said ball of fluff is curled up under my computer chair.

So what did we achieve on the allotment last week? There was more tidying up  Martyn did more rotovating and cut the grass whilst I planted the rest of the potatoes and did a bit of weeding.

I planted the last two varieties if potatoes namely Nadine and Rudolph. The potatoes were planted using a trowel through holes in weed control fabric. The holes were dug as deeply as the trowel will allow and then 6x fertiliser was sprinkled in the hole prior to popping in the seed potato and covering with the excavated soil.

In the same way I planted up another potato bed. This one contained a mixture made up of the left over odds and ends from all the varieties that we planted. Growing potatoes through weed control fabric not only keeps weeds down but also means that no earthing up is necessary as the fabric blocks out any light that would otherwise turn some potatoes green and render them inedible.

The first potatoes that I planted in open ground are just beginning to push shoots through the soil. These are not grown through fabric and consequently are earthed up. As we don't harvest early potatoes all at once the lack of a fabric covering makes harvesting a single root much easier.

A grapevine grows on two sides of our shed and along a section of trellis. The buds were beginning to break and so I cut it back. It needs regularly trimming during the growing season as otherwise the shed would be in danger of disappearing. It does produce fruit but the grapes are rarely big enough to eat as dessert grapes.

 The autumn planted onions are now growing away quickly.

The onions and shallot sets planted a couple of weeks ago are also now growing. We used to plant half of the sets earlier in module trays and keep them in the greenhouse but we no longer do this. We found that in the end there was no difference between sets started in this way and those planted straight in the ground. The transplanted sets suffered a check to their growth when planted out and so any advantage of starting them early was lost.

The peas are also coming through, we just need to hope now that they grow quickly enough to outrun the weevils. Peas and broad beans are attacked by weevils every year. If the plants grow quickly enough the notches that the weevils make along the edges of the leaves rarely affect the harvest.

Dead heading the sprouting broccoli didn't prolong the production of shoots and so the plants have now been removed and added to the compost bin.

 We cleared the leek bed and froze any leeks that were still usable.

The parsnip bed was also cleared. Most of the remaining roots had become woody but we managed to retrieve a couple along with a few usable broccoli shoots.

As usual at the moment rhubarb featured in our weeks harvest and we also cut a couple of small cabbages.

Prior to Martyn strimming the grass, we could have harvested a huge amount of dandelion but they are one crop that we would never use. Maybe you would!

I hope Dave doesn't object to a belated harvest Monday post

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

If your interested we filmed a tour of our plot and a walk around our garden

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Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett